


Cookies, Cakes, and Stress

by Dach



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Crack, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Mild Language, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, SHIELD 616 | The Bus, Stress Baking, made for the prompt: "bus kids crack"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-06-30 21:09:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15759729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dach/pseuds/Dach
Summary: Daisy first noticed it over a year ago, back when she had only just been recruited by Coulson. The cookies, that was. And the muffins. And the macarons. And the cakes, pies, and doughnuts. Baked goods were everywhere on the Bus.So, obviously, she couldn't be blamed for beginning to wonder where they were coming from. Which was why she was where she was now, curled up in one of the Bus' kitchen cabinets at 1:34 a.m.





	Cookies, Cakes, and Stress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [memorizingthedigitsofpi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/memorizingthedigitsofpi/gifts).



> This is for [Pi](https://www.memorizingthedigitsofpi.tumblr.com), who is an amazing, generous person.

 

(Edit by the incredible [Pi](http://memorizingthedigitsofpi.tumblr.com/))

 

Daisy first noticed it back when she had been captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. for her work with the Rising Tide. The cookies, that was. And the muffins. And the macarons. And the cakes, pies, and doughnuts. Baked goods were _everywhere_ on the Bus _._ For chrissakes, there had been a plate of cupcakes on the table in the room that Coulson had first interrogated her in. Her eyes had kept straying to the little candy butterflies adorning the carefully crested peaks of frosting, she remembered. But secret government organizations would do what secret government organizations would do, she had thought, not quite thinking to question the multitude of baked goods. It wasn’t until about a year later, after the whole terragenesis/inhumans debacle had blown over, that Daisy really had enough time to think about it.

It wasn’t like Mack led some crusade to local pastry shops every time the bus landed. In fact, the bus didn’t even land often enough to justify the constant availability of the goods. For a while, she wondered if perhaps Elena was abusing her powers to steal the treats from superstores without ever making contact with the ground, or if FitzSimmons had altered some 3D printer to supply the team with it. But no, Daisy reasoned. It definitely took more than a heartbeat to bungee jump from the Bus down to a superstore, and as long as Jemma had anything to say about it, all that that printer would create would be fresh fruits and vegetables.

Daisy couldn’t get a solid answer from May either, which had led her to suspect the woman herself for a while. She had dropped that suspicion when she’d found out about May’s spectacular lack of a sweet tooth. After that failed lead, she spent a while deep in thought.

The baked goods seemed to pop up most often before and after large events - almost like the stress itself produced them. And that was Daisy’s eureka moment. Someone on the Bus was a stress baker.

So just like that, her supposed dead end revealed a whole new theory.

Daisy didn’t ask anyone about it, of course. Oh no. Why would one ask something when they could instead conduct a lengthy, unnecessary investigation of their own?

So, anyways, that was why Daisy was curled up in a kitchen cabinet at 1:34 a.m.

She had been sitting there for about ten minutes now, back pressed uncomfortably against the wooden side and butt beginning to ache a little when the kitchen light was turned on. Daisy inhaled sharply, cutting off her own stifled yawn and craning forward to squint through the crack between the cabinet doors. All she could see was somebody’s shins, clad in gray standard issue S.H.I.E.L.D. sweatpants. Her field of vision didn’t extend to the person’s shoes.

Daisy watched with bated breath as the unknown person made their way around the kitchen. The first two minutes of the spying was fascinating. She used every tool at her disposal to try to diagnose the identity of the baker, squinting at the reflection in the stainless steel refrigerator and trying to recall if the walk was familiar. After those first two minutes, however, she got bored, and maybe a little… indelicate. She was leaning forward in the attempt to get a better look at the baker when her elbow bumped against a Windex bottle, not quite tipping it over but disturbing it enough to dislodge the bottle of drain cleaner tilted against it. The drain cleaner fell, impacting with the wooden bottom of the cabinet with a hollow thump. Daisy’s muscles tensed and she berated the drain cleaner mentally, hoping to god that the baker hadn’t heard the thump. No such luck. The person had frozen where they stood before carefully making their way over to Daisy’s cabinet. They were standing so close now that she could see the fine S.H.I.E.L.D. logo print on the sweatpants, and she was beginning to wonder if perhaps she should identify herself before the person shot at her, when the cabinet doors swung open. Daisy squinted through the sudden influx of light, her eyes watering as she blinked in a vain attempt to get more than a blurry impression of what the baker looked like.

“Daisy?”

Oh.

Oh, what the fuck?

Coulson was standing above her, wearing a standard issue S.H.I.E.L.D. apron (she was truly beginning to wonder just how much merchandise Fury’s S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided for its agents).

“Hey,” she dragged out the word, awkward, trying to turn her grimace into a smile. “Hey, A.C.”

Coulson’s forehead was creased with confused, his eyebrows drawn together and the corners of his lips turned down in a puzzled frown. “What are you doing?” he asked, voice hushed.

Daisy abruptly remembered that it was past one in the morning and lowered her own voice to a hiss as she responded, “Just watching the kitchen.”

“Watching the kitchen?” Daisy knew Coulson well enough to see that his expression, though stoic, hinted at worry -- his eyes had widened a little and his mouth was set in a carefully neutral line. “Why?”

“I’m not paranoid,” she scoffed. “Seriously. Calm down. I just wanted to find the sweets fairy.”

Now Coulson looked really concerned.

“You,” she hastily expanded. “You’re the sweets fairy.”

Now Coulson looked really, really concerned. “Daisy,” he began, slow, “in the past twenty-four hours, have you suffered any… blunt trauma? Dizziness? Maybe, oh, I don’t know, found some pills?” His expression was beseeching, worried.

“No way,” Daisy assured him, suppressing the urge to roll her eyes. She was beginning to feel a bit cramped and was wondering if she could get out of the cabinet whilst still retaining a semblance of grace. With a grunt, she began scooting across the bottom of the cabinet, falling ungainly onto the floor after squirming herself about halfway out.

Daisy clambered to her feet with a relieved exhale and Coulson scrutinized her carefully.

“So what’s all this about a… sweets fairy?” he asked.

Daisy sighed. “Just- you. Your baking.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to know the source of all the sweets so I, uh-” Daisy was beginning to realize how illogical her decision had been, “- decided to camp out in the kitchen. To spy. And see who’s the stress baker.”

There was a tenuous silence. Daisy tried and (rather spectacularly) failed to meet Coulson’s eyes and, at long last, he simply heaved a sigh.

“Go get some sleep, agent,” he groused. He was trying to appear annoyed by Daisy’s antics, she could tell, but his odd hybrid expression of relief and confoundment rather undermined the attempt.

“Yep. On my way. Already there.” She practically bolted out of the kitchen, answering Coulson’s exasperated “goodnight,” with a “you too!” tossed over her shoulder.

 

While on her way to her bunk, Daisy resolved to never again hide in a kitchen cabinet. Seriously.

 

What.

 

The fresh fuck.

 

Had she been thinking.


End file.
